Sustainable development of the new energy industry requires continuous input from professional talents. The new energy industry will continue to grow in importance, and the characteristics of the necessary cross-discipline talents that will promote its development are becoming more and more defined. This article puts forward an analysis model starting with the addition of talents carriers subdivided by specialties, and takes this subdivision as a starting point with the purpose of maximizing talents selection throughout the entire nation. First of all, we define each talent as a specific vector. Then a clustering algorithm is used to perform an analysis and the new energy talents database is created. Finally, we use an algorithm based on graph theory and discrete mathematics to calculate the essential value of the talents vector. This value provides a measurement of the importance of the talents. The current talents structure is analyzed in order to clarify understanding of the present situation so as to enable informed planning of targeted training needs and structural adjustments, thus meeting the sustainable development requirements for the new energy industry in China. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.